It Rarely Gets This Good

Investigators of every stripe dream about getting smoking gun documents like the ones multiple media outlets, including TPM, obtained today. They not only show aides and appointees of Chris Christie conspiring to punish the mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., a Democrat who did not endorse Christie's reelection bid in 2013, but they capture a tone and mentality that, well, you might find in the works of David Chase or David Simon. Jonathan Chait calls it an "almost comical venality bordering on outright sociopathy."

"It will be a tough November for this little Serbian," wrote David Wildstein, one of Christie's appointees to the Port Authority, apparently referring to Mayor Mark Sokolich. Wildstein is at the center of the scandal and has been called to testify at a state legislative hearing on the matter Thursday.

A nasty, brutish, xenophobic little comment. But one with the comic twist worthy of Chase or Simon: Sokolich is actually Croatian.